Decorative plates or decorative panels are known per se and used in a variety of ways for covering walls, ceilings or floors. They normally consist of a carrier or core of a solid material, for example a wood-based material, which is provided on at least one side with a decorative layer and a top layer and optionally with further layers, such as a wearing layer. The decorative layer is usually a printed paper which is impregnated with a resin. The top layer and the remaining layers often comprise a resin.
The carrier of such a decorative panel consists usually of wood or a wood-based material such as a MDF or HDF board or an OSB board, onto which an appropriate decoration, e.g. by applying a decorative sheet of paper, and usually further top layers are applied. Despite of this laminate structure there is a risk for decorative panels based on corresponding carriers made of wood-based materials that these will swell when exposed to moisture resulting in a damage of the panels.
The risk of swelling due to moisture is reduced significantly with the use of alternative materials as carriers, such as plastic or wood polymer composite (WPC wood-plastic-composite). WPC is a mixture of wood particles and plastic, which are mixed by a suitable production process into a homogeneous composite material having plastic-like processing properties.
In processing plate-shaped carriers on the basis of a WPC the plate-shaped carriers are usually processed as large format plates, which are divided in the course of the processing into a plurality of panels of a desired size. Then in addition the panels are generally provided with a functional profiling such as a tongue and groove profile or a locking profile at at least one edge by means of which the panels can be connected during the assembly in order to provide a contiguous surface.
Herein, one disadvantage in cutting or profiling of the plate-shaped carriers is that at the cutting surfaces wood fibers of the WPC material may be exposed, which may swell when exposed to moisture and thus can lead to a damage of the panel.